Tristan had been gone three quarters of an hour.
I walked over to where the first van had been fired. The ground was well crushed with glass.
I was looking for clues, but could find none. Just a spill of oil on the tarmac, capturing rainbows.
But that was ages ago, the fire, and surely this fresh oil slick was from some other vehicle, some more recent crash, and anyway, maybe the Brid and the Thing were dead already, and I was just playing a pair of deuces. Maybe that's all I ever get to play in this hand?
Tufts of dog fur were caught on the shards of glass, and something had painted the words Das Uberdog on the pavement.
My feet were getting cut.
My ankle was aching again, so I rolled up my jean leg to see the wound dripping, like those tiny holes were reopening.
Tristan still wasn't back yet.
I could hear Beetle crying out in pain from the back of the van, but I just paid
him no mind. Shades down. Other problems.
The black rain was dripping from my eyelids, into my line of sight, forming a beaded curtain. I hear a noise over to my right and I turn to see a man walking towards me. At first I think he's a bad guy, he looks that mean. Then I see the dogs coming, two of them, leashed to one of his hands. Over one shoulder he carries a shotgun, over the other a canvas bag. In his other hand a spade. And as the stranger approaches other details fall into place: the smears of paint on his face, in stripes: the look in his eyes, a look of pure momentum, like an animal.
He takes those last few steps, the ones that bring us near to each other, the difficult steps. I see then his bald head shining in the moonlight, jabs of colour here and there, bits of blood it looks like. "Tristan?" I ask. "That you?"
The stranger doesn't answer me.
"What you done, man? Where's the hair?" "Shaved it."
The two dogs were straining to be set free, howling towards the moon, feeling their blood pulled in waves by its gravity.
That's drastic action," I say. "I guess you needed to do that?"
Tristan's not looking at the moon. He's not looking at the stars, or at the flats, or at the van. Tristan's looking at me. I'm his sole intention.
"You know what I want, Scribble," he says.
Yeah. What we all want A glass of Fetish. Clean drugs. Good friends. A hot partner. All that.
Something more.
A squaring of the tides.
Sneak preview. I'm getting word of a new theatre. Hasn't got a name yet.
Working title is Bootleg Dreams. I've met the hero figure. His name is Scratch, and he tells a well wicked story. The names have been changed, to protect the guilty. This is how it starts: Wendy comes out of the all-night Vurt-U-Want, clutching a bag of goodies. You're a member of this gang of young hip malcontents. They call themselves the CRASH DRIVERS, so that's what I'm calling this new feather trip. The hero's name is Scratch, and this is one yellow shining journey. Golden yellow. Boy, have you got
problems! First off your sister, Shona, has been caught in Metaland, swapped for a lump of lard alien. Your job is to get this Shona back to base Earth. Of course that's virtually impossible; nobody's managed it before. Still you can't stop trying anyway, because of the deep love. Then there's the fact that the evil shecop Moloch is after you. For putting scratches in her face, no less. Your best friend, The Weevil, isn't helping, with his constant desire for the gutter. He wants to drag you right down next to him, keep you there, in the dirtiness. It's a hard life, and most probably you're going to die in this crazy Yellow. Be very, very careful. This ride is not for the weak. It's a psycho. A bit like real life.
Well maybe not quite that bad.
Some bad things buried out on the moors. Some good things as well, some innocent things. Some things that didn't want to get buried. Some that did. Some that got buried by accident, by snowfall or rockfall or soil slippage. Some that buried themselves, wanting the darkness to fall over their all-seeing eyes.
Plenty get buried there, out on the moors. It's where you go, when you come from Manchester, and you want to bury, get buried, or be buried.
On the way through the night, we talked about the wound. The way it was turning, spiralling out from its point of entry, coming in colours like a rainbow, crumbling at the edges in paisley shapes.
"I'm on a spree!" said the Beetle. "Stop complaining."
"It's not getting better, Bee," I heard Mandy say back, but some change was coming over the man, and it was making him ramble.
"I don't want it to get better!" he shouted. "I like it like this. Hey, Scribb! You seen my new colours?"
"Sure, Bee. Looking good."
I had to chance random glances now and then, along some straight path of road.
And then back to the wheel.
The air outside was dark pitch, flittering with passing shapes, like grey ghosts;
trees, houses, signals. And it was a good job I was feathered up to the Racer, because that meant that somebody else was holding the van, some expert, some young kid expert.
At least the rain had stopped. Stopped some time in the night, leaving the roads wet, slippery.
I took another glance back, and the colours were glowing, spreading out from Beetle's shoulder, taking charge of him, reaching almost to his elbow on one side, to the back of his neck on the other. Mandy was cradling his head in her palms. The dark air of the van suffused into a soft aura around his body.
I turned back to the road and the driving.
Didn't really know where we were going, just knew we were getting there. Baby Racer.
"I do think it's bad, Bee," Tristan was saying. "Extremely."
"Shit! Don't scare me, man," Beetle replied. "It feels good. The pain's drifting away. You get that, Trist? No fucking pain! Listen to me!"
We were listening.
"You know what that means?" said Tristan, quietly, almost like he didn't want the Beetle to hear.
I was waiting for the Beetle's reply.
Took an age to come, and it was quiet, like the shadow of a voice, "Not me. . . I'm pure. . . tell me I'm pure. . ." You could feel the hurt in there, as the Beetle's mind played against the wound, but I didn't look back. No way. Just kept my eyes blacked out to everything but the road ahead, losing myself in the darkness and the Vurt and the driving.
Please, somebody, take me away from this. Give me a straight road, a well-lit road, a sign-posted road, anything but this wounded road.
Tristan pushed through the gap, and settled into the passenger seat. He had the shotgun in his lap and the bag over his shoulder, and he was holding on to both of them real tight, like he was scared of losing them. From the back I could hear the dogs whim- pering over the dead Suze.
We let some darkness pass, out beyond the lamps now, deep country. "It's a Mandel Bullet," he whispered, keeping it secret.
"I was trying not to think that," I replied. "Murdoch's got him."
Jesus! Does it have to be like this?
"No one escapes it," Tristan said. "Once bitten, that worm just keeps on growing, spreading, multiplying. You can't stop it. No way. He's going fractal." Sounded final, like an official result in Vurtball, beamed in from the judge's bench. "It's a slow death," Tristan added.
"Don't say that," I whispered back "Please. Don't say that." No use. Just no use.
I was driving through the night, listening to Beetle's laughter, as the worm took
over.
"There's no antidote, Scribb," said Tristan. No answer. No antidote.
Beetle was doomed.
I guess he knew that anyway, being the Beetle, being au fait with everything.
That's the twister; you might know all the details of Mandel bullets, still didn't stop you enjoying the trip as they killed you. Mandel Bullets were designed to take advantage of the near miss, the wounding shot. If at first you don't succeed, put a parasite in there. Let that parasite suck the last remnants of life away, crumbling the skin into fragments. Each bullet contained a fractal virus. It takes maybe five seconds for the program to unload, direct to the cell walls. With twenty-four hours, forty-eight at the most, the entire metabolism has been taken over. You're dead. And how. The deepest cut was that those last twenty-four hours of your life were going to be the best you'd ever lived, as the fractals lit up like a rainbow, giving you visions of glory, and that was why the Beetle was singing now, his mind taken over, singing the praises of life.
Even in the midst of death, singing praises. . .
"You've been talking to my brother," Tristan said, calling me down from my thoughts. I took my eyes off the road for a second. Baby Racer kept his eyes there for me.
"What's that?" I asked.
"I saw you there, at the Slithy Tove." The Game Cat? You saw him?"
"Oh yes. I can see him. When Geoffrey wants me to see, that is." "Geoffrey?"
"Yeah. His real name. The Cat's best kept secret. Call him Geoffrey next time.
He'll most probably kill you." I could hear Tristan laughing as I clenched my hands around the wheel rim, driving on air, dark air. "Did he mention that I was his brother?"
"Yes. I didn't believe it at first. But I've seen him since, in the Tapewormer."
"What did you talk about?"
"He said that he felt for you. That he --"
Tristan exploded. "That man should stay out of my life!" His voice was driven by fire. "That fucker only brings grief!"
"Sure, sure. . . whatever, Trist. . ." I said, cooling it down some. We drove forward in silence for a few minutes.
"You want to talk?" I asked. Tristan turned his face to the side window, watching the black fields go by. "About how come you lost each other?"
When he spoke, it was coming from the depths, and he couldn't stand to look at me. "He went too far."
"What's that mean?"
"He went too far for me. So far, I couldn't follow. You got that?" "I got it."
Got nothing at all. Except that Tristan wanted to talk about Game Cat, about Beetle, anything to stop the thoughts of Suze.
The lost love.
"You've got some dog in you, haven't you?" I said. "Just a trace. Enough to know."
"You ever made love to one?" He was quiet for a moment.
"You ever made love to a dog, Trist?" I asked.
"Years ago," he answered. "But then I found the Suze, and nothing else came
near."
I knew that feeling.
Then he went all quiet on me, as he lit up a Haze joint, wreathing himself in
honey smoke. Then he said this to me, "Suze was expecting."
At first I thought he was saying that Suze expected to die, but then I got the real story. "Christ! Trist!" I said. "A baby? You had a baby on the way?"
"Listen to me," he stated. "I'm alive for one thing." "You're going after Murdoch?"
"I don't have to, Scribble. She's coming after you." "What's in the bag, Trist?"
"My hair." Figures.
"You got bit by a snake, yeah?" he asked. "I got bit."
"So you got some Vurt in you?" "So they say."
"Geoffrey told you?"
"The Cat says lots of things," I answered. "I don't know how much to believe." "Believe everything. He's been all the way."
"Meaning?"
"Geoffrey took a bite too. From a snake."
"He's got some heavy Vurt in him, no argument." "Wasn't just any ordinary snake bit him."
"No?"
"Not at all."
"Tell me about it."
Tristan turned back to the window, so I let the van drift on easy, secure in Baby Racer's arms. A night bird flew across the headlights; a sudden vision of life, moving on black wings. "It happened years ago," Tristan said, his voice coming on like a slow recording. "When we were both young, me younger than him, but both of us hooked on the feathers. Couldn't stop taking them. You know that now I'm totally opposed to it, but there's a reason for that."
"Geoffrey's the reason?"
"He was into it more than I was. But I was looking up to him so much, I couldn't stop following. He would go out on bad journeys, down to the low life, buying up the blackest Vurts he could find. One day he found a Yellow. Our first Yellow." Tristan paused for a moment. "He paid heavily for it."
"I thought you couldn't buy them?" "Depends what you pay with."
I let that settle in my mind.
Depends what you pay with.
"I was scared of the feather," Tristan continued. "We carried it back home, and Geoffrey was so excited. Our parents were asleep by then, so we had the room to ourselves. I was young and in awe of my brother, so I took the feather with him. But I
was scared, so scared."
"Which feather was it?"
"Takshaka. You know, where the dreamsnakes come from?" I didn't reply, my eyes on the road.
"You ever done Takshaka, Scribble?" he asked. "Yeah. I've done it."
"Really?"
"No. Not really. Only in the Tapewormer. I went Meta."
"That's nothing. That's just a joke Yellow. Takshaka kills. It's famous for it. I was scared but we went in anyway. Geoffrey got bitten. Not by any normal snake. Oh no, not my brother. Takshaka himself, the king of the snakes, sank two fangs into his arm."
"That should've killed him."
"Geoffrey took it on board. . . worshipped the wound. Fed it on bones and flesh. I think he fell in love with the poison inside him, and it fell in love with him. Maybe one in a thousand is capable of this. The Game Cat talks about it one time, in the magazine." I caught on to the change of name. "He says that some flesh is sacred to the Vurt; it can live with it. It's like a kind of marriage. So he says. Whatever. . . my brother got addicted then. Craving more. Having once tasted. . . well, you know how it is."
"I know."
"He was seeking out more and more dangerous feathers. I think he went too far. I had to fight back."
"What did he find?" I asked.
"It was too much for me, Scribble. What my brother was doing. . . I had to take measures."
"What happened?"
"He found Curious Yellow."
Oh Christ!
The van skidded on a wet bend and I could feel paintwork being peeled off, as the struts of a fence clawed into us. Seconds of my life went by in a rush as I clamped down on the wheel, spinning it. Did no use. I was totally alone and human. Human! The passengers from the back were calling out and cursing me, and then the dogs joined in, all three of them. Sounded like a zoo on wheels. I could see the trees sliding near as we hit a rock, or something, and then this big oak trunk in the headlights, dancing, straight in front of us. Seemed like the whole world was screaming, me with it, and the Beetle singing along from behind, his colours exploding. But then the Vurt came down, hard!